Robert Tchenguiz v Director of the Serious Fraud Office (HM Procureur for Guernsey and Anor intervening)

The Court of Appeal has refused permission for Robert Tchenguiz (“RT”) to use 22 documents, selected by him from around 45,000 which were disclosed by the SFO in the now-settled damages proceedings which RT brought against the SFO, in private trust litigation in Guernsey.  The documents related to co-operation between the SFO and the Guernsey authorities as part of the criminal investigation conducted by the SFO in connection with the collapse of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing. 

The Court of Appeal’s judgment (Jackson LJ) reviews the law in relation to CPR 31.22, which imposes a prohibition on the collateral use of disclosure documents.  The Court of Appeal strongly endorsed the “high public interest in ensuring the integrity of the criminal process”; the “high degree of importance which [Parliament] attaches to maintaining the co-operation of foreign states in the investigation of offences with an overseas dimension”; the “strong public interest in … protecting those who provide information to prosecuting authorities from any wider dissemination of that information, other than in the resultant prosecution”; and the “inherently confidential” nature of liaison between the SFO and foreign authorities, which meant that the “…extent to which and the manner in which they co-operate are matters which should not ordinarily go into the public domain, except in so far as they are relevant to any criminal prosecutions which follow”. 

The Court of Appeal held that the High Court (Eder J) had been right to find that those public interests, together with the public interest militating against collateral use, outweighed the limited potential utility of the documents to RT in the Guernsey litigation.

The full judgment can be read here:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/1409.html

Pushpinder Saini QC and James Segan appeared for the Director of the Serious Fraud Office.